Branded

I live in constant fear that someday I will lose my pit crew. Those are the people I hire to drag my ass out of bed every day, make my meals, do my laundry, scrub my toilet, wipe my butt, etc. The state pays their wages. And we all know what the legislature giveth the legislature can just as easily taketh away, especially these days when they’re privatizing the everlovin' hell out of everything.

If that ever happens, in order to meet payroll by my own devices, I will probably have no choice but to do something that is against all my moral and political principles. I’ll have to either 1) turn tricks or 2) wear a t-shirt with a corporate product brand on the front.

To me, wearing a Budweiser shirt or McDonald’s boxer shorts makes the following fashion statement: “I’m a chump.” I’m paying a humongous corporation to advertise their product. Pretty good scam they’ve got going on there. If I was the Super Bowl, I could charge them 1.5 skillion bucks to flash their silly little brand for 30 seconds.

But if cripples are left to throw ourselves at the mercy of the Fortune 500 to fund our butt wiping escapades, these shrewd capitalists will seize the opportunity to traffic in the seedy business of human billboards. Cripples like me will be assigned a corporate sugar daddy to pay for our pit crew and in exchange we will have to wear a shirt emblazoned with one of their brands everywhere we go. And we’ll have to hang around whatever strategic locations the corporations send us to reach the target demographic. Like for instance, if you’re wearing a Viagra shirt, you’ll have to hang around golf tournaments.

It might not be so bad, especially if I end up with a brand that makes me look cool, like Jack Daniels or Harley Davidson. It might even turn out to be my dream job. My dream job has always been whatever the easiest job in the world is at the time. Right now it seems like the easiest job in the world is sign holder. But human billboard would surpass that as the easiest job in the world. You don’t even have to exert the effort it takes to hold a sign. You are the sign. It’s the perfect job for cripples.  Even the comatose can do it.

But it could also be a nightmare. I don’ think cripples will have any say over which corporation adopts and brands us. So it will be a real crap shoot and I could be sentenced to a life of wearing an embarrassing brand that turns me into a laughingstock, like American Girl or the New York Mets. And there’s no possibility of parole. Branded cripples will be like branded cattle. There’s no turning back.

So maybe I should be proactive and issue what the bureaucrats call an RFP (request for proposal). I’ll auction off the advertising expanse of my chest and see if I can get a corporate bidding war going.

I shouldn’t allow myself to take part in such a degrading practice as becoming a human billboard. I have to salvage at least some of my pride. So I think I’ll just turn tricks.